Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew 6:20-26)
I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our Gospel reading today is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is written down in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. At the beginning of this sermon, Jesus teaches his listeners the famous words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Later on, he teaches about giving to the needy, the Lord’s prayer and fasting. He teaches about not being anxious, and tells the parable about the wise man who builds his house upon the rock and the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand.
There are many things in this sermon of Jesus that are familiar. But the section that we are reading today is about righteousness.
Jesus says: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
There are two things that Jesus teaches us here: first of all, if you want to enter heaven, you have to be righteous. If you’re not righteous, you will not enter heaven.
The second thing that Jesus teaches us is that there is such thing as a fake righteousness. This fake righteousness will give you a fake heaven, but won’t let you into the real one. This fake righteousness is taught, promoted and lived by false teachers—in this case, the Pharisees and the scribes.
Jesus puts us face to face with a reality: there is such a thing as fake religion, false religion, false righteousness, false teachers. Jesus teaches us that we shouldn’t believe everything we hear.
So he says: I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
So what was it that the scribes and Pharisees were actually teaching people? In the previous verse, Jesus says: Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
The funny thing is this: the Pharisees were some of the strictest Jews alive at the time. They weren’t people who seemed to be “relaxed”. But at the same time, Jesus accuses them of “relaxing” God’s commandments.
But let’s just step back a moment, before we think about the detail of what Jesus is saying.
Firstly, I want you to think about the people who were listening to Jesus on that mountain that day. Who were they? What sort of people do you imagine that they might have been?
We read that Jesus went up the mountain, sat down and his disciples came to him.
Now why were these people chosen to hear these words of Jesus and not other people? We might say that they just happened to be there at the right time. But the fact that they just happened to be there is God’s work—he allowed them to be there on this day on the mountain. He was working all things together for the good of those people who had come to hear Jesus. He also worked it in such a way that Matthew the evangelist was able to write down what Jesus said so that we could read it ourselves today.
Proverbs 3 says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Here we have a group of people who are listening to Jesus, a group of people who just happen to be there on a particular day. They are trusting in his words with all their heart, and they are not leaning on their own understanding. And just think how thankful they must have been to have heard Jesus speak—how things worked together just so that they could be there. They could acknowledge God in all their ways, they could look back on the day, the week, the year, and see God’s hand moving to gently bring them to the feet of Jesus.
This is exactly the way it happens for us. God has worked all sorts of things together in such a way that he can reveal his righteousness to you today. Firstly, he inspired the evangelist Matthew to write these words down. Then, he enabled and allowed the writing of Matthew to be copied and published and preserved together with the rest of the New Testament for 2000 years. Through empires and kingdoms, he allowed Christianity to flourish and make a great impact on the world, which we are still feeling today, from the mediaeval times and before. Also, he brought you here to this little church in Gippsland to hear these same words that Christians have been listening to for centuries. How did he bring you here? Maybe you had Christian parents and a Christian family—maybe you met a Christian later in life, and you converted at a later age. Maybe going to church for you is a good habit that you got yourself into, and enjoy the company of the people here, and like singing, and it makes you feel good.
Whatever your reason, here you are—and you can look back and acknowledge God in all your ways. You can see that God has provided you with all that you need to support this body and life. You can see that God defends you against all danger and guards and protects you from all evil. You can see that he has done all of this only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.
But here’s the crunch—every person that is born on this earth is born a Pharisee and a scribe. When you are in the presence of Jesus Christ, you always learn something new which can only be learnt from him. Every person that is born on this earth wants to be saved by fake righteousness. Every person is born lost from God’s narrow way. Every person is born condemned by God’s law—helpless and crushed. Every person is born in sin, and every person’s heart is inclined to worship idols, and if they are going to be righteous in the eyes of the one true God who made heaven and earth, the only way it is going to happen is that God himself comes to you, speaks to you and declares you righteous. The only way that you will be righteous is that God himself allows you to enter heaven, God himself teaches your heart the truth which otherwise you would never know. And so when God teaches us something—even when it is uncomfortable for us—this is his love at work. God speaks the truth in love to us.
And this is exactly what happened that day, when Jesus preached to his disciples the Sermon on the Mount. He revealed to them the wisdom from heaven that they would otherwise never be able to work out or come up with for themselves.
The Pharisees wanted to teach the people how to be righteous by using the 10 commandments as a checklist. They could say—“tick! I’ve done this one. I’ve done that one. I haven’t committed murder. Great! I’m on my way to heaven.”
And now Jesus gets out his surgeon’s knife and cuts right to the heart of their false teaching.
He says: You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
So here are the Pharisees running around saying, “I haven’t committed murder. But it’s my right to be angry. It’s my right to tell those good-for-nothings what’s what! It’s my right to put them in their place. It’s my right to insult them, and blast the blow-torch of my mouth all over those people—they deserve it! Look how much damage those people are doing, look at how those people are corrupting our world, our society, our youth! It’s my right to insult them, it’s my right to kick them where it hurts, it’s my right to push them down, make them writhe, hurt their feelings, make them feel uncomfortable!” –isn’t it? I can tell you that I know that these sinful thoughts constantly spring up in my mind day after day.
What does Jesus say?
He says, “Everyone who is angry at his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Jesus is not speaking in abstract here. He is talking right to those who are listening to him. Speak, Lord, your servant hears, as Samuel said. Jesus is our teacher, but he is also our judge. And he lays open the hearts of all who hear his words—he doesn’t just give them some good advice for the future. Jesus shows them where they have failed every day of their lives up until now. He can’t save you, until the Pharisee in you is killed, stoned to death, crucified and buried. And these stones he throws one by one: you will be liable to judgment, the council, the hell of fire.
This is what God’s law does to us. We want to relax the commandments. We want to tick all the boxes and think that we’ve done everything that God requires. But Jesus uses God’s law like a knife and comes and finds the hypocrite in each of us, and puts it to death so that we despair completely of ourselves, our thoughts and our own actions.
St Paul says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.” That’s what every pastor needs to say from the pulpit—that they are the chief of sinners and know their sins better than anyone else. But much more importantly, that Christ died for you—Christ is your righteousness. His conception makes your sinful conception clean, his birth makes your birth holy, his suffering, his death and his blood makes your body forgiven and whole, his resurrection makes you alive. And his church on earth, by opening the bible and speaking the words of Jesus to you, speaks this truth to you, baptises you, preaches to you, absolves you, and feeds you with the body and blood of Christ, so that by this and through these things that happen in the church, God himself justifies you and speaks his judgment of complete and total forgiveness of all your sins to you. That’s Christ’s righteousness. That’s the righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees and exceeds the righteousness every false teacher in the world today, throughout Australia, Victoria and even Gippsland, where there are plenty of false teachers to be found in abundance. Christ’s righteousness is the only righteousness by which you will be saved.
And now in the last part of our reading, Jesus gives a little case-study and a little life-application if you like. He preaches the fifth commandment to us, “You shall not murder”, he preaches against anger and insults, and now he draws our attention to the altar. He says: “Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
Here Jesus is talking about the Jewish faith where people offered a burnt offering to God in the temple. The tradition of altars goes right back to Cain and Abel. You remember before the temple and the tabernacle, people built altars. Jacob built an altar when he woke up from his dream about the ladder. And just as angels ascended and descended on Jacob’s ladder, so also Jesus teaches his disciple Nathanael at the end of John chapter 1, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
And so, we Christians throughout the centuries have built altars, not as places of sacrifice, but as places where Christ is truly present, where he has promised to come and preach his word to us and to baptise us and give us his body and blood. We build altars in the place where we call upon the name of Jesus and where the angels ascend and descend upon him.
In our churches, we always have an altar. Throughout the history of the Lutheran Church especially, many people have had a family altar where they call upon God’s name in their home. For many people, this has been the kitchen table.
The altar is the place where God brings his forgiveness from heaven to earth. The altar in the church is the place where God speaks his righteousness to us. We are not saved by something that happens to us while we’re walking down the street, we’re are saved by the gifts that God gives us: baptism, the preaching of the gospel, the sacrament of the altar.
When we come to the altar, we present our whole bodies as a living sacrifice to our living Lord Jesus. We present ourselves to him so that he may consume our sin with the fire of his wrath, and receive from him his life-giving body and blood , so that we may be strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life eternal.
We bring all our problems to Jesus. And Jesus takes them on himself and shares them with all the other Christians who come to the altar with you, so that we bear all our burdens together in love. We come to church with our problems, we leave with the problems of our fellow Christians throughout the world. We are all connected to each other through the Lord’s Supper which we eat and drink together.
And so Jesus also doesn’t want us to be fighting with each other when come. We should go and be reconciled to our brothers and sisters. This doesn’t mean mean that we stay away from the Lord’s Supper for ever and ever, so long as people have something against us, but we should do it quickly: Come to terms with your accuser quickly, Jesus says. Get it sorted before you come to the altar next time. We don’t have anything to lose by being reconciled to people. Actually, I tell a lie!—we have everything to lose, we have our pride and sinful flesh, our idolatry, our body and blood to lose, and we have the life of Jesus, his body and blood to be gained.
But Jesus doesn’t send you out to do this task of reconciling without him. You might think that you’re going to go out and speak to an enemy who will hate you for what you do, but you are always speaking in the presence of Jesus—and of all the angels that are ascending and descending on Jesus—and they are your friends. So it is a task which Jesus gives us that we are able to do in freedom, in peace, with joy, with confidence, with certainty, because he has made peace with you through his blood on the cross. It’s a task that a Pharisee can’t do, and it’s a job that can only be done when the Pharisee is rebuked and put to death, and it’s a job that can only be done in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone, in his forgiveness, his strength and his power.
As St Peter says: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, you alone are our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption. We love you, Lord Jesus, our strength. You are our rock and our fortress and our deliverer, our God, our rock in whom we take refuge, our shield, and the horn of our salvation, our stronghold. Amen.
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